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Hotels.com is terminating its lucrative ‘stay 10 get 1 free' rewards program later this year. It initially sounded like April’s fools joke but has turned out to be a sad reality. The program replacement is called One Key rewards. The new program will be shared between Hotels.com, Expedia, and Vrbo.
It's important to note that no exact dates for the change have been mentioned. However, Hotels.com has indicated that the switchover will happen in mid-2023.
What Happens To Existing Hotels.com Rewards?
The thosand-dollar question Hotels.com members will be asking is what happens to any free nights they accumulated or partial progress towards their goals?
- Members who have accumulated a free night will have its worth deposited in the new OneKeyCash. For instance, if you have a free night worth $150, it will be converted to $150 worth of OneKeyCash.
- Members who have not completed their full 10 nights will receive 10% of their stay total in OneKeyCash. For instance, if they stayed six nights and spent $500, they would receive $50 worth of OneKeyCash.
One Key Program Overview
The new One Key program is set to launch later in 2023 with the following features:
- One Key will be the new loyalty program for Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo.
- The program has four tiers of status, Blue, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
- You can earn rewards on a wide range of travel activities. This includes flights, hotel stays, car rentals, and more.
- The program earns you rewards on U.S. points of sale for Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo.
- Earn 2% OneKeyCash on every dollar spent on eligible hotels, packages, vacation rentals, car rentals, activities, and cruises.
- Eligible flights earn 0.2% OneKeyCash per dollar spent.
- Your OneKeyCash is redeemable toward a wide range of bookings. This includes hotel stays and flights.
How Does One Key Stack Up Against Hotel.com Rewards?
Unfortunately, there is no way to sugarcoat this. One Key is not good news for Hotels.com fans. In fact, it's a monster devaluation. Under the book 10 get 1 free Hotels.com Rewards program, you earn a free night for every 10 bookings. The average value of your bookings determines the value of the free night.
For instance, if your 10 nights cost $1,500 in total, you would receive a free night worth $150. That is essentially a return of 10%. With the new One Key program spending, the same $1,500 will yield a return of $30 worth of OneKeyCash. That is a massive devaluation of 80%.
And things are even more awful if you are booking a flight worth $1,500. In that case, the return would be a measly $3! Yes, you read that correctly: A three-dollar return on a $1,500 flight makes earning OneKeyCash on flights virtually useless.
Our Take
Devaluations are nothing new. However, most of the time, programs aim to ease the pain of major changes by breaking them down into several steps. Instead, Hotels.com seems to have gone full throttle with the ripping off the sticking plaster approach by frontloading the pain of switching programs.
In the long run, the only winners are probably other hotel loyalty programs. Crunching the numbers, it is more likely that booking directly with hotel loyalty programs will be more lucrative than using hotels.com and earning a 2% return.
Will you stay with Hotels.com? Or, are you planning to switch allegiances in light of the devaluation? Let us know in the comments below!
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
The only reason I have a current 50 nights booked with hotels.com is the rewards program. I will not continue to book with them with the new rewards program as it is not anywhere near the same benefit. I have booked all of our travel with hotels.com for over 10 years due to the rewards program. It will be interesting to see how many loyal customers they lose as a result of this change.
I have been a loyal Hotels.com customer for 10 years with 75-100 nights a year. This 2% program is an absolute joke and I will not be using them any longer, unfortunately.
This is absolutely ridiculous! From 10 percent down to 2 percent. I will definitely be leaving hotels.com.
I will definitely be leaving Hotels.com
One Key is trash. They have put my rewards to zero. I have contacted customer service 4 times over the last two weeks and they just send me canned messages that they are working on the problem and they will get back to me. It’s bad enough that they are reducing the reward percentage, but not allowing people to use the rewards they earned is worse. If I had known they were going to take away my rewards nights, I would have been sure to book and stay in a room before the transition.
I have booked countless nights with hotels.com, enough to be in the (previously Gold) now Platinum category. I always came back to them because their reward system was fantastic. I won’t be back again unless there are NO other options. This is a slap in the face to their loyal customers and I see no benefit in using them going forward.
I’m not fond of this new system. I will not get free perks/one free night after ten…. So I will most likely move over to trivago, booking.com or some of the others I’ve wanted to try but was always so loyal to hotels.com
Bad move
Bye!
Extremely disappointed in the devaluation but also the clumsy manner. I had two free nights accumulated, and was halfway to another bonus night, yet now on my OneKey it shows I have $0 points. Have others experienced the same? Maybe it will eventually show up, but there is no chat available (link doesn’t work on OneKey website) nor any e-mail address or other contact available to try and solve this problem.
Lack of support a big red flag. Obviously I won’t be making any further booking with any of the OneKey partners if I am not made whole.
Moritz, I think the program goes live next week, so I’m waiting until then to see what happens with my account.
Same here. In fact I booked for 16000 Euros in rooms thru hotels.com for a big birthday celebration. all my vouchers and stamps are gone. no support. nothing. I will avoid hotels.com even if they are cheaper in the futute. unbelievable how they just rip you off.
They zeroed out my rewards too. The only place I can get chat to work is in the app. I have been contacting them for two weeks about this and I only get canned replies and no action.
Yes I had the same experience and it was very frustrating. It eventually showed up on my account but there was no message on the app to explain that rewards would only be converted days later and the app was no help, it kept looping me back to the login page. I will not longer book on hotels.com either.
I was a very long, loyal and frequent customer of hotels.com. Goodbye hotels. 👎 they just cut rewards by 80%. So much for “loyalty “. Never again
I cannot even get any of my loyalty rewards back nothing. it all disappeared . I am so disappointed ! I’m done with them . Never again
Agree this is terrible. I usually get 4 to 6 free nights a year. Now it will be one free night every 2 years. Except it won’t, as I will never use hotels.com ever again
Nope. Loved hotels.com for more than ten years, always for the 10% rewards good at ANY property. Devalue them to 2%? Will go to southwest.com to earn miles, you can usually find a bonus hotel where the bonus is MUCH higher than 2%.
Well I have $89 in rewards to use. Then not sure yet. hotels.com was so easy
I will no longer use hotels .com I will now be much better off using the loyalty plan from the property
I use hotel.scom for everything. not anymore. I will have to say good to hotels.com. sorry. this is ridiculous and humiliating ..GOOD BYE HOTELS.COM
I just booked on hotels.com but I really am going to stop. I was a frequent user and really enjoyed that 10% return. But looking at the cash awards now it’s more like 5%. I will perhaps use it for independent hotels that are not otherwise in a loyalty award program. Otherwise, it’s too meager to stick with.
Sad indeed. What a ripoff for us loyal hotels.com members. I’ll start booking direct from now on.
Unfortunately, this is a deal-breaker. Their prices were always a bit higher but we had this nice loyalty program. Now, there is no point of using hotels.com. Will look for a different provider.
Sounds like I need to look for another loyalty program when booking my business accommodations.
What’s your suggestion?
Mark, there are many to choose from. It depends on how you tend to book and whether you want to commit your loyalty to one hotel chain (ex: IHG or Hilton) or want to stay with a general OTA program like Expedia/Hotels.com (which isn’t good at this point). You also could consider Orbitz Rewards, Trip.com Rewards, and Booking.com Genius if you want an OTA program.
Looking for an alternative. Such a shame. Probably going to use American Express travel from now on. Guess they no longer want a customer base.
Wow. This is really disappointing. I’ve been a loyal Hotels.com member for 20 years
I have been with hotels.com for at least 7 years because of the Loyalty Program.
I will NOT stay when this switchover happens.
I’m OUT! I wish I could cancel past bookings. Unfortunately, these recent past bookings are for non-refundable hotels. 😩
I’m done with hotels.com. They downgrade me, I fire them!
I’ll definitely leave!
I’m a long-time customer of Hotels.com. After the switch to OneKey, I won’t be using them any longer except to use up my credit.
I was booking a bunch of nights for this spring/early summer and saw the notice. At first I thought it would be a good deal until I read through the OneKey Site, ugh! I will use my free night and then figure out who I’ll be booking with in the future. I would rather use my Chase or Capital One portal then use this. It was good while it lasted.
Came along too late to have used Hotels.com, and usually book direct or with Priceline. This devaluation sheds new light on my current methods – Expedia has been useful recently for bookings I couldn’t find on Priceline/Chase Travel/Bilt Travel, but these sites will always remain niche to me.
Hotels.com, Expedia, and VRBO will certainly become my booking choice of last resort (pun intended). Air B&B, Booking.com, and direct book will get all mybusiness.
I booked a 14 night stay yesterday over Thanksgiving and as I was doing it I saw this change coming to the program. I immediately decided to use a discount coupon to get 8% off and lose the hotels.com reward rather than use this new program and it’s lousy rewards.
Given also that hotels.com stays normally earn only 2% via TopCashBack, I expect to switch to TripAdvisor &or Orbitz, which may not last because it is also owned by Expedia!